It’s Halloween season! At least, it is at the time I am writing this. Personally, Halloween is one of my absolute favorite holidays. When I was a kid living in the states, it was a time for me to dress up as however I wanted and go around and get a ton of free candy. As someone who eats candy all the time, this was an important holiday. It was also a day I could spend with my family and have fun walking around. My Dad always did my makeup and it was something special every year for us to do
When I moved, I realized how much the “Halloween” we all know and love and see in movies, is a very American idea. In Belgium, Halloween wasn’t much of a thing. At my school, we had a large group of Americans who all lived in the same neighborhood and they would do trick or treating, but it defiantly was not the same. My Halloween that I knew and loved didn’t really exist anymore.
Now I’m back in the states. I’m (technically) an adult, so Halloween is a time for costumes still, but instead of trick or treating, people go out to parties. Now, there is nothing wrong with parties. In fact, sometimes they are incredibly fun and it's nice to be with people your own age in a relaxed setting.
But, it definitely is very different. Suddenly you are pressured to look good on Halloween (for reference, think about the Halloween scene in Mean Girls) and go out and get high and/or drunk. And if you are someone who doesn’t really drink or smoke, it can be kind of hard to be in that environment with all the other social pressures around you.
Sometimes I wish it was acceptable for adults to dress up in costumes and go trick or treating, or go to a party with Halloween games and prizes. There is a certain kind of innocence that is missing from Halloween now in my life that I miss.
This year, I went to my first ‘grown up’ Halloween party. It was alright, and it was cool to be out and about with friends and having strangers say they like your costume. Plus, this is the first year at a party where I didn’t feel the need to show off and be attractive.
In today’s society, everything is incredibly hyper-sexualized. We live in a culture where sex sells. This turns things as innocent as Halloween into another aspect of society where people are pressured to look a certain way which is mostly unachievable. Even when I was a kid, I was pretty tall, so I shopped in the adults section. I wanted to be a fairy, but the costume I got was so short I had to wear another dress underneath it to make it longer. I was in the 4th grade.
Even this year, when I went out to figure out what costumes I wanted to buy for Halloween, I ran into this pressure of trying to look my best. At first, I wanted to be a steampunk girl (basic I know), mostly because I wanted to wear a corset. But when I got into the dressing room with the bad lighting and strapped myself into the corset, all I could see was what was wrong with me. Things like, my breasts were too small for the corset, or that you could still see my stomach pop out, even more because of the material, or even my neck was too long and too pale and my hair was too short to pull it off. I ended up going with a Sally from Nightmare Before Christmas costume which I love, but my point still stands.
I’m not saying that wanting to look hot or sexy on Halloween is a bad thing. If you want to go out as a slutty nurse, then, by all means go for it! (Though, when picking costumes please be aware that it’s real easy to be racist. Don’t be that asshole who goes in blackface or in an “Indian” costume, etc.) But, I guess my point is, where is the innocent fun to be had? This holiday is about dressing up as someone/something else and pretend to be that. It’s about going out and having fun and going to haunted houses and getting scared.
Where did that innocence go? And could we bring it back? There really is no point to this article other than posing the question, what are you doing for Halloween and is it because you were pressured into it, or because you want too?
If Halloween isn’t fun, then there isn’t a point for the holiday…right?
